Latest and Greatest from the Rio Olympics

Well that’s that. Sam Holbrook is a good umpire – I’ve watched him many times – but that’s a shamefully terrible call. But you don’t leave 12 runners on base and make three errors and blame the game on a blown call – though it was a badly blown call. They owned it. Another promising postseason lost to defense. Brooks Conrad is laughing somewhere and I hate him for it.

Shame on MLB for not upholding the protest anyway. And shame on you Atlanta-based Braves fans for trashing the field – you’re lucky to have the chance to go to games millions of us would love to go to, though you hardly show up during the season. You’re an embarrassment.

Chipper may have made an error, but that’s not what we’ll remember him for. We’ll remember the Met Killer, the high socks, the sly grin, the hilarious tweets, the batting title, the All-Star Game HR, the 1999 MVP and the 1995 World Series. Fitting he ended his career with an infield single and was stranded at third base – which he manned reliably for so many years. Thank you Chipper Jones for 19 years of phenomenal baseball – timeless play, and I am so thrilled to tell my children one day that I got to watch you play, many times, that we made eye contact and I urged you to hit a double (not a HR, weirdly enough) and which you did, weirdly enough. You’re the last link to my childhood, when baseball became such an important part of my life. I’m looking forward to being there in Cooperstown 5 years from now, when you’re enshrined with the other greats of the greatest game ever.